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27 Mar 2016

Mention the word stress and people get stressed out. I cannot stress enough that stress is something that we need to deal with, whether you like it or not. If you can handle your stress well, you can turn your stress into success. Sounds interesting? What is stress then? Stress is defined as our body (physical) and our mind (psychological) responses to things that we don't handle well. Like if you forget where you drop your handphone, that is definitely a very stressful experience. The symptoms of stress are worries, tense, bad temper, short breadth, faster heartbeat, and in many cases, lower body immunity to illness.In short, stress is how our we humans react to changes in lives that we don't feel comfortable with. Note that if you do not react to stress, you do not have stress. If you respond to stress positively, you will have success. That's what this article is about.What causes stress? There are 3 major causes of stress:

Time

Money

People

1. Time

When you are short of time, this feeling of inadequacy makes you start to imagine the bad things that could happen. Being late for appointments, filing for income tax and rushing a deadline are the 3 most common time stress today.

However, having too much time is also stress. The everyday situation when we feel that we have too much time is when we are waiting (a few nano-seconds) for our computer or smartphone to upload or download something and they seem to take forever to do a simple and routine thing.

If you feel that you are short of time, understand that time is just a concept of human beings. We are not short of time, we are just short of ideas on how to do unlimited things in limited time.

The solution to time stress are threefold: plan (so that you will have more than enough time and are more ready), get help and change your plan. That is, you limit the things you do with your limited time and your stress will go away fast.

2. Money

Everyone has not enough money, and even the richest people find that money is not enough for their ever rising needs.

However, the rich people understand that there is no such thing as a lack of money. This is simply because money is just a concept and has no intrinsic value. It is what you do with your money that has value. Thus the rich have no shortage of money, because they can find value in whatever little money they have, and they can always increase the value of money with whatever money they have.

For example, the rich know the value of investing and compounding interest, and they use that to increase their money.

Another important concept of money is exponential growth or decline. The rich knows that everything adds on to everything in much bigger ways that the original thing is. For example, all computer memories is on exponential growth basis: 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB etc.

Thus to really get more money you need to apply exponential growth to everything that you do. For example, keep working on something until it creates a wave and exponential growth will take place. Like the number of friends I have on my Facebook, I now run out of my limit of 5,000 friends and have to open another account. That is exponential growth because I will not be able to know 5,000 friends outside of Facebook, but because of Facebook's 'Friends of Friends' capability, I can grow my friends exponentially.

3. People

As we know, people do gives us lots of stress, especially the people that we don't know or we don't like.

Note that we have no problem in dealing with or working with people that we like, and that has nothing to do with what the person is giving us.

To handle stress from people well, you need to separate people from the problem. Note that people are not the problem, it is their problem that is the problem. For example, if the person is rude to me, I need to understand that this person is not the problem, it is his rudeness that is the problem. Thus if I can handle his rudeness well, this person is not a problem to you any more.

The ultimate goal is to turn people that we don't like to people that we like. But before that, we can turn such people to like us first. How to make people like us? The simplest and fastest way is to follow what they do. This is because the human's mind has a tendency to like what we know and are familiar with. So if we do what people do, like we speak like them, walk like them and even think like them, they will like us.

In short, stress is caused by 3 things: Time, Money and People. We can all turn stress into success when we handle these 3 things well. Happy stressing!

By Andy Ng, Chief Trainer Coach at Asia Trainers. Andy specializes in short but deep impact courses on finance, leadership, sales and effective employee skills. Since 1996, he has trained over 81,131 people in 14 countries, with the latest being Cambodia. Visit him at www.asiatrainers.com and see his action at www.youtube.com/AndyNgCoach/videos today!

22 Mar 2016

I dare to claim that a
healthy cash flow is even more important than your business's ability to
deliver its goods or services! That may be placing a bit too much importance on
your cash flow, but consider this: if you fail to satisfy a customer and lose
that customer's business, you can always work harder to please the next
customer. But if you fail to have enough cash to pay your suppliers, creditors,
or your employees, you will be out of business!

A healthy cash flow is an
essential part of any successful business.
It is just like blood flow in your human body. We know that if your blood is not flowing
smoothly in your body, you will suffer stroke and eventually die. Same as business. If cash is not flowing smoothly in your
business, your business will be stuck and eventually fail.

No doubt about it, proper management of your
cash flow is a very important step in making your business successful.

So understanding cash flow is
the first step in effectively managing your cash flow. There's more to it than
just a fancy term for the movement of money into, and out of, your business
checking account.

But what
is Cashflow?

In its simplest form, cash
flow is the movement of money in and out of your business. It could be described
as the process in which your business uses cash to generate goods or services
for the sale to your customers, collects the cash from the sales, and then
completes this cycle all over again.

Inflows:
Inflows are the movement of money into your cash flow. Inflows are most likely
from the sale of your goods or services to your customers. If you extend credit
to your customers and allow them to charge the sale of the goods or services to
their account, then an inflow occurs as you collect on the customers' accounts.
The proceeds from a bank loan are also a cash inflow. Any advance payments from your customers, and
receipts from the government (e.g. grants like SDF), plus any interest received
are all cash inflows.

Outflows:
Outflows are the movement of money out of your business. Outflows are generally
the result of paying for goods and services purchased and for expenses. If your
business involves reselling goods, then your largest outflow is most likely to
be for the purchase of inventory. A
manufacturing business's largest outflows will mostly likely be for the
purchases of raw materials and other components needed for the manufacturing of
the final product. Purchasing fixed assets, paying back loans, and paying
accounts payable are also cash outflows.
Similarly, any advanced payments to suppliers, refunds to customers and
interest payments are also cash outflows.

To properly manage your business's cash flow, you must first analyze the
components that affect the timing of your cash inflows and cash outflows. A good analysis of these components will
point out problem areas that lead to cash flow gaps for your business.
Narrowing, or even closing, cash flow gaps are the key to cash flow management.

There
are 4 main areas where your business cashflow is stuck:

1. Accounts Receivable

Accounts receivable represent
sales that have not yet been collected as cash. You sell your merchandise
or services in exchange for a customer's promise to pay you at a certain
time in the future. If your business normally extends credit to its customers,
then the payment of accounts receivable is likely to be the single most
important source of cash inflows. In the worst case scenario, unpaid accounts
receivable will leave your business without the necessary cash to pay its own
bills. More commonly, late-paying or slow-paying customers will create cash
shortages, leaving your business without the cash necessary to cover its
own cash outflow obligations.

Accounts receivable also represent an investment. That is, the money tied up in
accounts receivable is not available for paying bills, paying back loans, or
expanding your business. The payoff from an investment in accounts
receivable doesn't occur until your customers pay their bills. The idea of
accounts receivable as an investment is an important concept to understand if
you wish to consider the impact of accounts receivable on your cash flow.

2.Inventory

Inventory represents goods
that you have purchased and are yet to be sold.
They are subject to obsolescence, damages, changes in fashion, and worse
still, storage and interest financing cost!
So the first step in healthy cashflow is to have healthy inventory
flow.

You should not keep too much
inventory, neither should you have too little inventory or you will lose out on
sales. Many years ago, the distributor
of a top Japanese car lost out on many sales because you have to wait 3 months
to get your car delivered from Japan! This is a case of unhealthy cashflow due to
no inventory!

3.Fixed Assets

Fixed assets are assets that
you keep for use in the long term. It is
fixed and not subject to frequent changes in the short term. The most common type of fixed assets is land
and buildings, plant and machinery and equipment. The cost of owing fixed assets is not just
interest and installment but the risk of obsolesce and changes in fashion and
trend. If you have too much fixed
assets, you will be busy servicing the installment payments every month. To improve your business cashflow, rent
instead of buying fixed assets. Many
businesses have sold their industrial building and rent from the buyer
instead. This brilliant move is called
“sale and lease back” and is the fastest way to improve your business cashflow.

4.Old Staff and Old Mindset

Many businesses are not moving
forward because their staff are stuck with old mindset and refuse to innovate
and move according to the times. For
example, many of them still wait for businesses to come to them instead of
pro-actively looking for customers. In
fact this old mindset is the biggest area to make your cashflow stuck. Get rid
of old staff and staff that refused to change or send them for training and
coaching by professional business coaches and trainers.

So analyse your business cashflow properly and eliminate the above 4 main
areas of gaps. Remember, healthy business needs healthy cashflow, and
cashflow is more important than the business itself! If you would like more information on this
and other business topics, email to andy@asiacoachingtraining.com .

Based in Singapore, Andy Ng has, since 2001,
been an international Business Coach and Trainer. To-date, he has coached over 141 business
enterprises on a one-to-one basis and trained over 9,751 people on a wide range
of management and business topics. His
“Weekly Group Coaching” programs are
highly popular, and so are his “Friday and Wednesday afternoon” seminars. Andy has appeared at MediaCorp’s 938Live!
“Living Room” program, “Lunch Break at noon”, The Sunday Times, Lianhe Wan Bao
and other magazines. Visit www.asiatrainers.com or call
him at 65-8201-4347 now.

21 Mar 2016

Mindfulness is often thought of the same as meditation, when in fact it is more than that. Perhaps it is easier to understand mindfulness from the opposite, i.e. when do we consider someone as mindless? When he does things without thinking, or when he does things with so much 'auto-pilot' that he becomes robotic and apply the same approach to different situations. Like many salespeople assume customers like details and would go into details without considering the client's needs. Mindlessness can also be found in salespeople that are ill prepared and incompetent, and yet try to pretend that they know.

Simply put, mindfulness has 3 elements: you need to first take note of something, be aware of it, and remember that awareness. So for example if I am being mindful in a sales meeting, it means that I have to take note of my client's objections, be aware that it is an objection and remember that awareness. Note that once you have mindfulness of an experience, you will never forget that experience for the rest of your life. It's that simple. In our training with our clients, we teach them how to increase sales with mindfulness as follows:

Plan the day before

Before every sales presentation, plan the responses to the likely objections

Listen to the real message of the customer, don't be distracted by noises like 'Your price is too high' may conceal the worry that your company's service is poor

Do not talk while the customer is talking

Be careful of non-verbal objections, like the showing of uneasiness of the client

Do not defend when the prospect raises objection, instead listen to the reason behind the objection

See things from the customer's view

Empathise the customer's feelings

Be realistic, don't paint superfluous results

When in doubt, slow down and ask, don't continue talking

Think positive, and think of what can be done instead of what cannot be done

Do not dwell on the past

Do not over plan

Use words economically and don't say anything unnecessary

Do not confuse the customers with too many choices, keep your choices to 2 or 3, maximum 4

Always ensure, never assume anything

Give people the benefit of doubt, hear them out first before making your stand

When you find that the customer is giving you excuses after excuses, take a break and let him rest

Use your 5 senses fully: see, hear, touch, feel and smell.

Most importantly, be in the present with the client. Take out the trash, which is anything that keeps you away from the only thing that mattes, here and now. When you are truly in the here and now, you will be amazed at what you can do and how well you do it

By Andy Ng, Chief Trainer at Asia Trainers, details are at here. Related articles on mindfulness and sales:

11 Mar 2016

Many people want short cuts to sales success. This is good as long as we don't cut short things. Short cuts are not bad as long as we are always fulfilling one purpose: service to others and not just serving ourselves.

The 5 short cuts to sales success are as follows:

Good compensation for the sales team. There must be incentives to make doing more sales rewarding, not more pressurizing

Good sales and management tools. The basic tools include CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software that incorporates automatic emailing, SMS and calling. Best of all, this tool should be fully funded by the Singapore Government under SPRING Singapore's ICV (Innovation Capability Voucher $5,000 scheme)

Good Objections answering system. Many companies fail in sales because their sales team does not know how to overcome sales objections

Trained sales team. A trained sales team not only has the skills, attitudes and knowledge in sales and marketing, but is also highly motivated and is on the go.

Good sales support team. Without strong support in finance, logistics, customer service, accounting and administration, sales will falter

ART OF CONSULTATIVE SELLING

HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS AND WIN MORE SALES

Date: 17 March 2016 Thursday 9 am to 5 pm

Venue : The Plaza 02-346 7500A Beach Rd

Fee: $398 each, $299 each for 2 and above, $199 each for 5 and above (with PIC 60% grant)

Imagine your company has just launched the newest product that has killer features. You were so excited and went out all the way to inform everyone about this. Yet one by one, your customers started to give you objections and rejections. It seems that your customers are only interested in price and nothing else!

Should you give up or go back to improve your product further? Or do you improve the way you sell?

If the above scenario describes you and your company, you are doing what my mentor Andy Ferrari Norman said, hard selling. As much as 80% of salespeople do hard selling. We all know that hard selling only produces hard rejection or hard objection from your customers. What you need to do is Heart Selling.

How to sell from your heart? Do you have to go out and cry to get sympathy buys? Truth be told, the best way to do heart selling is to simply consult the customer, that is, do consultative selling.

Consultative Selling is defined as heart selling that connects with the customer and with the purpose of solving his problem. It is like the doctor who always do consultation before he dispenses any solution (medicine) to the patient. And of course the doctor must connect with the customer or the customer will not share openly with the doctor. The doctor gets the customer to open up with him by showing concern and having a real connection with him.

Whether you have been selling all your life or you are new in sales, you need to move from hard selling to heart selling. Master the art of consultative selling and you’ll see your sales soar, guaranteed.

BENEFITS:

*** This course qualifies for PIC (Productivity & Innovation Credit), where you can get 60% Grant. This means your net investment is only 40%. Hurry! Limited seats, register now!

FOR WHO TO ATTEND:

Managers and Directors in Customer Service and Sales

Executives in Sales, Bus. Dev. and Sales

All Support Functions Executives and Managers

Self-employed people in Insurance, Banking and Real Estate

Retail Industry personnel

THESE ARE WHAT SOME OF OUR CLIENTS AND PAST PARTICIPANTS HAVE TO SAY:

Interesting and refreshing, a wake-up call. I now know how to get more sales without incurring higher cost. AndyTheCoach at www.asiatrainers.com is the best in this topic!

- David Lum, GM, Francois Marine Pte Ltd

I learnt about how to identify gaps and capture opportunities for growth. Thank you AsiaTrainers.com and your 368 strategies!

- Patrick Koh, Manager, Leong Hin Foods Pte Ltd

Learning about AndyTheCoach concepts and strategies has helped me to increase my sales by 41%. I have attended 12 courses this year!

- Wan Siew Onn, Sales Director of a software company

PROFILE OF ASIA COACHING TRAINING

Sales Coach Andy Ng has 29 years experience: He started doing business at the age of 5. Since 1996, Andy has trained over 81,413 people in 14 countries. His Magnetic Selling DVD and e-book SUN ZI FOR SALES have sold hundreds of copies in 5 countries. Asia Coaching Training was, from 2001-2007, the licensee for Action International in Singapore. The clients trained by Andy include SingTel, SIM, Manulife Financial, Walton International, DBS Group, M1, Yakun, BreadTalk, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Gillette, F & N Foods, Kaplan Asia and Teleperformance Asia. Visit our blog atwww.andyngtrainer.blogspot.sg and see him in action at www.youtube.com/AndyNgCoach

9 Mar 2016

Two
biggest headaches in sales: how to overcome sales
objections and where to get new
customers?

Your company
can advertise heavily and send your team to a multiple-day or weeks long
business school.

Smart companies know that the reason why the sales team
is not performing is not due to lack of education but lack of push. How to push your salespeople everyday? Wouldn't they sick and
tired of the same message from the company? Why not out-source to us. (see video at here)We at www.asiatrainers.com have been doing
business coaching and executive coaching (on a one-to-one or small group basis)
since 2001. Typically people start with training.

For a limited time
until 14 March, if you register 5 pax, you will get 50% fees reduction, plus 1
pax free. Check us out by calling 6225-1784 Idah or visit www.asiatrainers.com

ART OF CONSULTATIVE SELLING

HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS AND WIN MORE SALES

Date: 17 March 2016 Thursday 9 am to 5 pm

Venue : The Plaza 02-346 7500A Beach Rd

Fee: $398 each, $299 each for 2 and above, $199 each for 5 and above (with PIC 60% grant)

Imagine your company has just launched the newest product that has killer features. You were so excited and went out all the way to inform everyone about this. Yet one by one, your customers started to give you objections and rejections. It seems that your customers are only interested in price and nothing else!

Should you give up or go back to improve your product further? Or do you improve the way you sell?

If the above scenario describes you and your company, you are doing what my mentor Andy Ferrari Norman said, hard selling. As much as 80% of salespeople do hard selling. We all know that hard selling only produces hard rejection or hard objection from your customers. What you need to do is Heart Selling.

How to sell from your heart? Do you have to go out and cry to get sympathy buys? Truth be told, the best way to do heart selling is to simply consult the customer, that is, do consultative selling.

Consultative Selling is defined as heart selling that connects with the customer and with the purpose of solving his problem. It is like the doctor who always do consultation before he dispenses any solution (medicine) to the patient. And of course the doctor must connect with the customer or the customer will not share openly with the doctor. The doctor gets the customer to open up with him by showing concern and having a real connection with him.

Whether you have been selling all your life or you are new in sales, you need to move from hard selling to heart selling. Master the art of consultative selling and you’ll see your sales soar, guaranteed.

BENEFITS:

*** This course qualifies for PIC (Productivity & Innovation Credit), where you can get 60% Grant. This means your net investment is only 40%. Hurry! Limited seats, register now!

FOR WHO TO ATTEND:

Managers and Directors in Customer Service and Sales

Executives in Sales, Bus. Dev. and Sales

All Support Functions Executives and Managers

Self-employed people in Insurance, Banking and Real Estate

Retail Industry personnel

THESE ARE WHAT SOME OF OUR CLIENTS AND PAST PARTICIPANTS HAVE TO SAY:

Interesting and refreshing, a wake-up call. I now know how to get more sales without incurring higher cost. AndyTheCoach at www.asiatrainers.com is the best in this topic!

- David Lum, GM, Francois Marine Pte Ltd

I learnt about how to identify gaps and capture opportunities for growth. Thank you AsiaTrainers.com and your 368 strategies!

- Patrick Koh, Manager, Leong Hin Foods Pte Ltd

Learning about AndyTheCoach concepts and strategies has helped me to increase my sales by 41%. I have attended 12 courses this year!

- Wan Siew Onn, Sales Director of a software company

PROFILE OF ASIA COACHING TRAINING

Sales Coach Andy Ng has 29 years experience: He started doing business at the age of 5. Since 1996, Andy has trained over 81,413 people in 14 countries. His Magnetic Selling DVD and e-book SUN ZI FOR SALES have sold hundreds of copies in 5 countries. Asia Coaching Training was, from 2001-2007, the licensee for Action International in Singapore. The clients trained by Andy include SingTel, SIM, Manulife Financial, Walton International, DBS Group, M1, Yakun, BreadTalk, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Gillette, F & N Foods, Kaplan Asia and Teleperformance Asia. Visit our blog atwww.andyngtrainer.blogspot.sg and see him in action at www.youtube.com/AndyNgCoach

You know that sales would be easier if customers come to you. How to attract the with your Irresistible Offer? How to use Words and Phrases that Sell and avoid those that repel?

If you reading this, you have been looking for the right type of training for your salespeople. Some people told me that just by applying one single in the course, they can recover their investment.

Whether you are new or old in sales, if you want to outsell the competition and make this year your best ever in sales, come for this course that is taken from 7 Sales Gurus worldwide.

*** This course qualifies for PIC Bonus(Productivity & Innovation Credit), where you can get 60% Hurry! Limited seats, register now!

POWER-PACKED CONTENTS INCLUDE:

Test on Can you sell Oil to the Arabs?

Irresistible Sales Presentation in 6 Steps

How to Shorten the Sales Cycle

Selling Your Price

Top 10 Secrets of Irresistible Selling

Top 20 Tactics of Irresistible Selling

Hypnotic Selling by guru Joe Vitale

Yale University Words and Phrases that Sell

The Ultimate: Know what you want and Attract it

Information and Surprise - how to use them

BENEFITS:

Powerful Ideas that were not taught in school

Fulfill your inner drive to be a Super Salesperson

Get answers for all your queries about Selling

Know how to CLOSE EVERY SALE

Know 4-Way Leverage to Increase sales by 46%

Create new value for your co. through sales

Realize your Goal to Earn High Income this year

FOR WHO TO ATTEND:

Sales Managers, Marketing Managers, BD Managers

General Managers

Sales Executives

Account Managers and Executives

Self-Employed and Entrepreneurs

THESE ARE WHAT SOME OF OUR CLIENTS AND PAST PARTICIPANTS HAVE TO SAY:

Good process in closing sales, I rate this course 10 out of 10

- Joseph Wee, Sales Manager, Fuchs Lubricants Pte Ltd

Excellent platform for us to review our sales process. Sometimes we are too overwhelmed and do the wrong things.

- Wendy Tan, Sales Manager, Citibank NA, Citigroup

This course on Irresistible Selling taught us skills that are not taught well and elaborated elsewhere. I feel motivated to do more sales calls now, thanks AndyTheCoach at Asia Trainers

- Lim Shi Min, Sr Sales Executive, Agiligity Projects Pte Ltd

PROFILE OF ASIA COACHING TRAINING

Sales Coach Andy Ng has 28 years experience: He started doing business at the age of 5. Since 1996, Andy has trained over 81,413 people in 14 countries. His Magnetic Selling DVD and e-book SUN ZI FOR SALES have sold hundreds of copies in 5 countries. Asia Coaching Training was, from 2001-2007, the licensee for Action International in Singapore. The clients trained by Andy include SingTel, SIM, Manulife Financial, Walton International, DBS Group, M1, Yakun, BreadTalk, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Gillette, F & N Foods, Kaplan Asia and Teleperformance Asia. Visit our blog atwww.andyngtrainer.blogspot.sg and see him in action at www.youtube.com/AndyNgCoach

4 Mar 2016

People often think that mentally strong salespeople do certain things. The truth is that mentally strong salespeople don't do certain things, and the 5 things they don't do are:

Blame the company for not having products and services that are competitive in price and specifications. They know that if the company's products and services are so strong, they will sell by themselves and don't need any salespeople at all. That's why mentally strong salespeople will instead find out how to turn the product's weaknesses into strengths

Look at their 'upstairs' for help. Mentally strong salespeople know that their business and strengths come from below, i.e. people that they take care of, be it their clients, support staff or sales team

Give away power. Mentally strong people know that they are powerful, and they don't give away power in negotiation, meetings and daily communication. The biggest power we have is our own choice. So mentally strong salespeople always have a choice, they can choose to walk away from a sale

Seek acceptance. Mentally strong salespeople don't seek acceptance, instead they seek to understand others and use their influencing skills to influence people. But they accept that not everyone may accept their view

Think that methods is everything. Mentally strong salespeople know that it is the people that makes the difference, so they know that no matter how strong your method or tool is, if you cannot connect the heart, it is useless

By Andy Ng, Chief Trainer Coach at AsiaTrainers, details of of courses at www.asiatrainers.com

3 Mar 2016

A Letter from my heart:Dear all friends,Over the last 2 months, I have been approached by 10 friends, each with very interesting business proposals. Some of them have business proposals that span the globe and run into millions of dollars of income. Others are more subdue, but none of them conflicts with what I am doing now - coaching and training. After thinking for 2 nights with some meditations, I conclude that I have to evaluate each proposal not based on how attractive they are in terms of money and business models, but what type of people that I am working with. Without a pinch of doubt, I only can work with people that share the same values and philosophies as me. I am not interested in just making money, there must also be meaning in the way I make the money. Also, the business must contribute to mankind, and not just some ideas to take advantage of opportunities. That's why I think these 5 businesses I will never deal with: computerized trading, gambling, medicine that harms people, night entertainment and alcohol. There are 5 businesses that are top of my list:

Education, especially those that transform people and give them a lifeline

Sales and Marketing, anything that helps a business to do better in sales and marketing

People empowerment, anything that empowers employees and make their work safer and easier

Entertainment, those that are wholesome and interesting, not boring stuff

If you and your businesses fall under the above 5 list, I would be working with you closely. Any businesses that are outside this list, but within my values and philosophy, I will also be working hard with you. Hope this clarifies. Thank you

2 Mar 2016

At the
end of the first set of United States presidential primaries, and as Super
Tuesday — the biggest primary election — starts today, it is becoming clear
there is a real possibility that billionaire Donald Trump may be the Republican
presidential candidate this year.

While it
might have taken many political pundits by surprise, there were some, like the
creator of the famous Dilbert comic strip, American cartoonist Scott Adams, who
warned in 2015 that there was a method to Mr Trump’s apparent madness and that
it came from the art of persuasion.

There are
scholarly attempts to explain them, based on well-known books on the subject
such as Mr Robert Cialdini’s Influence — The Psychology of Persuasion, but what
explains Mr Trump’s method is one simple sentence.

Mr Blair Warren,
author of the e-book The One Sentence Persuasion Course — 27 Words To Make The
World Do Your Bidding, said: “People will do anything for those who encourage
their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their
suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies.” That’s it. There you
have Mr Trump’s campaign strategy template, summarised in one sentence.

Let’s see
what Mr Trump’s target audience’s dreams, failures, fears, suspicions are, who
their “enemies” are, and map what he has said and done so far against these
five components of persuasion.

1. ENCOURAGE
THEIR DREAMS

The American
dream, for the majority, was getting well-paying jobs even with a high school
education, in factories or in other services, raising a family and living a
comfortable life, even in small-town America.

Globalisation
has shifted manufacturing jobs from America
to China and Mexico, and many service and support jobs to India, the Philippines and elsewhere. A
Reuters report said that, in the US
state of Mississippi
alone, “more than 75,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared in the past 15
years”, and in the comparable period the “median household income fell nearly
12 per cent”.

For the
past couple of decades, the US
government, economists and other experts have asked Americans to accept the
present situation as the new normal. Mr Trump came along and stoked their dream
and a longing for a glorious past. “We’re going to make America great again,” he thundered in his
speeches across America,
without giving any specifics.

2. JUSTIFY
THEIR FAILURES

Mr Warren
said that “assuring others they are not responsible (for their lot in life) is
essential for gaining influence over theirs”.

So, Mr Trump
blamed it on the government as well as the politicians in general. In an
interview on the ABC channel, Mr Trump said, “people are sick and tired of
stupid and incompetent people leading our nation”.

He blamed
the US government for not
negotiating the trade deals well, and for not imposing tariffs on Chinese and
Mexican imports into the US.
“The problem with free trade is you need smart negotiators on your side. When
you have stupid people like we do, free trade’s no good.” He has not told
people that they have to be better trained in STEM (science, technology,
engineering and mathematics) subjects in a knowledge economy.

3. ALLAY
THEIR FEARS

Master
persuaders, according to Mr Warren, pay special attention to their audience’s
fears. “They offer support. They tell us stories,” he said. Mr Trump’s
presidential announcement speech in June 2015 had that offer of support for
American fears about illegal immigration. It had the comforting metaphor of a
wall and a story to go with. “I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls
better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will
build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for
that wall. Mark my words,” Mr Trump assured Americans then.

4. CONFIRM
THEIR SUSPICIONS

“It is a simple
thing to confirm the suspicions of those who are desperate to believe them,”
said Mr Warren. Starting with his presidential announcement speech, Mr Trump
had been confirming the suspicions of his audience about what and who caused
their troubles.

His audience
suspected free trade, immigrants and religious minorities who were different
from them. He simply confirmed them. Here’s what he said:

When
reading Mr Trump’s speeches about Muslims in America to his predominantly
Christian audiences, I recall what Mr Warren said: “Nothing bonds like having a
common enemy. The thing they are struggling with is their enemy. Whether it is
another individual, a group, an illness, a setback, a rival philosophy or
religion, or what have you.”

Soon after
the attack in Paris
in November last year, Mr Trump raised a bogeyman.

He said he
was all for a database tracking Muslims in the country and a month later called
for a “total and complete shutdown on Muslims entering the United States”.

There have
been far-right candidates before in Republican presidential primaries, such as
talk show host Pat Buchanan and former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. But they
all fell by the wayside and more moderate nominees emerged.

Will there
be, for the first time, a US
presidential candidate who has played on the masses’ fears and suspicions, and
directed their anger towards the country’s neighbours, trade partners and
followers of one of the largest religions in the world?

If Mr Trump
wins in November this year, how will he deal with Mexico,
China, the Middle
East and the rest of the Islamic world — in fact, the rest of the
world?

ABOUT THE
AUTHOR:

S N Venkat
is senior associate director, Office of Postgraduate Professional Programme, SingaporeManagementUniversity.
The opinions expressed here are personal and do not reflect those of his
employers.